Today canvassing, I’m going to be as human and non-work as I’m able.  Will be selfish in that I get to meet new businesses, business people, creatives…  Looking for Architects, Digital Marketers, Graphic Designers, the like.  Want to see offices and how they’re laid out, how they’re designed.  Want to learn how they market their services and products, themselves, tell their story.  Will head to car in a minute.

When people think canvassing, or knocking doors, they think sales.  I’m not going to do that.  I’m out to meet people, further create community, and tell a story or two… and hear a story or two, or more.  Treat self to lunch while I’m down there, maybe.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Sent out another contract.

Back from meeting with leads group member.  Busy day, and one of proverbial production.  Going out to dinner with Dad.  Think Monti’s.  Not sure.  Haven’t eaten all day, and not from election, just the way it worked.  Product of my production.  Zephyr of new ideas and stories land on my brain branches and tempt me to stay in this chair.  How many people do this, stay at work longer than they have to.  I do, as it’s not work.  This is truly who and how and what I am.

The Mike Madigan form re-written, to more expanse and echo, communicative yields and movement.  New Beat… one I’ll forever keep and replicate, within which set new slates and abet new gates.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

2/4/20

My sister’s birthday.  She, turning 39.  Time again reminding me to move quicker.  With more efficiency, yes, but with more.  Of everything. Intention and sight, focus and fixation, containment.  Going through leads….

Sending more emails than I have I think in weeks.  3:!9 now.  May head over to the office in a bit.  Canvassing and prospecting these small businesses today in BMK, not the Now I want as an AE.  I need bigger houses, tech, or something tech associated.  Found a couple prospects through research…. TECH.  What….

Yes, just tech.  Everything tech.  Software developers, video game designers, software engineers… everything in that vertical.  Honestly, I’m getting annoyed by all the one or two-character coves when prospecting.  I’m going more than at a high velocity, to be in altitudes of mirroring height.

Added some companies to Follow-up grid.  Now, zenning… meditation, collection.  Today, marking a couple appointments, making a handful of connections and conversations arriving.  Still in odd tilt from past few days.  Telling self to be enveloped and engulfed, CONSUMED by work.  More and more sights with my concentration on tech, or anything tech-associated… it all returns to having clients be at ease, pleased.

After this last cluster of minutes in day, head to parents for sister’s birthday.  More than likely will spend night there, work more tonight and research more tech dimensions and enclaves in Marin, East Bay (Berkeley), some SF.  It’s more than internet or phone, it’s principle and pervasive solution for businesses.  Thinking of not giving life to wine blog, vinovinevin, but beginning a tech-centered blog… a stream of notes and musings and findings, associated with tech, yes, but more business and best practices for tech companies.

Brevity, in everything.  Not going to keep repeating the word “tech”.  Ugh…..  Brevity in all communication, expression… let your prospect respond.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Working at coLAB.

Following up on today’s walk around Berkeley, various people met, and certain leads.  Didn’t get to follow up on everything, but close enough.  Now have more leads than most could manage, I feel.  Keeping my tempo and vocals at a BPM which makes me more apt to touch everything.

Knowing my sales Now, which isn’t sales-toned or tuned… wonder why I keep saying that.  This is life, and business, but more life, and people not wanting to stress.  Be happy.  Be successful.

Consolidating.  Of course.  Sonic assures and reassures that.  That all tech, internet and phone and whatever else is under one roof, in one hand… and that they don’t have to worry about it.  And, me, as an AE, taking this away from tech.  And even away from Sonic, to a degree.  It’s the person, the narrative of their business, and the story created when we meet.  Like a new customer recently said to me, when we met for the first time, “Price is easy to understand, what else is there?” Something to that effect and tune, echo and talk.

People will say “sell yourself”.  I say don’t sell at all.  Meet people, go for a walk around the neighborhood, your “territory”, and enjoy your day.  A-B-C.  “Always be closing.” Some say.  Me, “About Building Community”.

Need to nearly leave, for class.  No idea what I plan to talk about, specifically.  Carrying this momentum with me to campus, to the classroom.  Start with them, with their days, narrate…. Not so much sell, but share your reality and story… make us listen… what grabs our attention, etc.

Start with writing… writing freely.  Today, a bit, I felt not so much nervous but asking myself how I’m going to speak Sonic, what I’d say to someone meeting them for the first time.  Then I said, FUCK IT.  Just say hi, ask them their name, get them talking.  CONVERSATION…. This most meteorically translates to writing.  This is all writing, I told someone who was an AE with me, or AAE, when she asked me how I stay motivated.  I told her this is all writing, and that’s where I come from.

In sales, don’t resent your roots, your past, your story.  Of course, there might be a learning Road, but no curve.  Your story should not be curved or curbed, nor should your narration…. “Hi, I’m just walking around the neighborhood, saying hi… What’s your name?” They know I’m from Sonic, with my sweater on, so there’s no need to slap them with my name and why I’m in the area, or specific intentions for being on Gillman & 9th, or 8th, in Berkeley.  Don’t be so eager to talk…. 

Yes, I am going to write something on this AE life.  I don’t know… book, another blog—fuck no—essay, story, sketches… there’s an idea, sketches.  From when I interviewed with Mark, to my first time on the street, to my first sale, my more recent ones, to now in the coLAB working offsite and out of office, Day 2.

What a fucking ride, this AE act.  Not at all an act, but the current act in my play, story, narration, print on life, take on life, ME in life…..  In love.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

First day working from home.

Or out of office.  Indie AE, I’m thinking of myself being.  Meeting a little over an hour ago, then back home to go for run.  Suited in running visual, form, but was caught up in calls, emails.  This makes it now even more known to self that I need wake at 4 and run.  No wine last night, set alarm for 4.  Woke, but no run.  Right back to sleep.  FUCK.  So here I am in running shirt and shorts, even shoes on, eating a turkey and Monterey Jack sand’ in kitchen.  Typing.  Meeting at 3 with wine industry influencer friend. 

Day began with trip to Office Depot for files, and small file cabinet.  Brought far too much shit home with me—papers, even two fucking staplers.  For my AE life… NO PAPER.  Or, as little as possible.  Threw what remained in the boxed I used to transport all the shit home, and put in dark corner of garage.  Now in backpack, nearly nothing.  Just some cords, pens, and this laptop if needed.  To the event I’m attending tonight in Novato, after meeting with wine friend, I’ll only have phone.  Telling self that I need operate from phone.  And only one of them… the Sonic silver one.  Sonic Silver, I’m calling it.  That’s all I’ll bring. Need to charge it.  What a day… frantic and moving and filing and organizing, de-cluttering and more organizing, calling and driving to Rohnert Park to meet with someone who won’t buy anytime soon.  Wants our services, but I need to get more in the building to sign, elect us over the incumbents..

Received email from prospect.  Meeting scheduled.  That makes two appointments made for day, and another with a potential IT partner.  For some reason I feel under-accomplished for day.  More than likely from not making calls.  Will be made up, tomorrow.  In field the entire day with new AE.  We’ll be in the East Bay, Berkeley and Albany.  Will have lunch down there as well.  Packing light, again.  Only biz card and cell phones.

90 minutes till meeting, and quite a bit of time left in lunch.  Would have gone for a run but found self thinking too much about it.  Just got an email from someone requesting a quote.  May end lunch sooner and not near the hour marker.

Quiet in the house.  No music, just keys being pushed.  Much better than the office I must say, with all the chatter and coughing, people walking by and other distractions.  Day after tomorrow—

Just found a scheduling conflict.  For Friday.  Shit… our quarterly meeting, company-wide.  Guess I’ll have to re-schedule.  Will call tomorrow morning to do.  Other AE is driving to East Bay. I offered to get lunch later in day for us.  Need to work on calendar management… crucial, I’m finding, and potentially embarrassing.  Schedule less, and appointments further distanced, rather than respective antitheses.  Taking a breath.  This is just Day 1.  Learning curve, learning Road, all in learning to re-learn certain basic habits and basics in business practice.

1/28/20

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Embracing Whim.

Spontaneity, everything in the in-the-moment complexion and consistency of my moments.  Meeting at ten, and until then collecting here at desk, combing through leads, and building conversations.  Today, this morning, right when I woke, I thought of having an amazing day… getting to my office and travels, and seeing what I can do as an AE.  Tell this Sonic story better than anyone in the company.  Certainly write it better, or I hope I can, do, will, am…. 

Essays, stories, building from what I have.  The morning, clear and perfect and beaming.  There’s a music to me that I’ve never heard or felt before.  More than just wanting to work, or be productive, but speak to as many people as I can.  Only 8:19 but I’ve produced more than many would in the first hour or even 1.5 hours of day.  Not bragging and not elevating, just enjoying the ride.  Why not, the ride isn’t forever.  And with the promise to my little boy that one day he and I will have our own office and create together, I have to keep this beat and have it more mobile and hungry, a uniquely ravenous angle and gallimaufry of words and thoughts… no editing, no corrections.  As much as I can and as quick as I’m able, not concerned with sense.

Whim, being and creating in the moment, true FREEwriting is the creative code of my P-O-Z Agency, how I speak the Sonic tongue.  Why not be more free, dash toward, SPRINT for, more liberty, liberation.  Work should always be not just a source of happiness but defining definition of….  Work, why do something you hate?  Why resist spontaneity and chance, writing from where you are and who you are.  MY kids do it all the time and the sense of content about them is something more than just worthy of study but a championing understanding and caress of life.

FREEwriting.  Ideas, more of them….. not trying to inventory them, yet.  Or even at all.  Just touching and working from the ones I can catch, write, do something with and for.

Connected with someone at a business that interests me.  The business is creative, digital, story-oriented….  San plan or method I follow my curiosity.  No blueprint, for now.  Just my hunger, just my assurance and knowledge this will more than merely “work out”.

Wrote letter to lead.  Patience, something I’m still learning.  Need to wake earlier.  This morning up at 6-something which is far too late.  Alarm set, AGAIN, for the god hour of 4am.  When home from class tonight, eat and sleep.  Earlier to bed, earlier to wake.  Just talking to myself at this point but that’s a given in narrative.  Sales… more inward jots.  Do I write about knowing now, work, sales, or nothing, or everything?  Love time to collect.  Know precisely how I’m approaching the day, this AE life…. Maybe not so much spontaneously but with expanded eagerness and love.  Yes, that.  The latter.  To be successful in sales, “SUCCESSFUL”, quotes needed, you ought love your way, your methods, your practice… and before loving it you have to know what it is. MINE, jazz.  Music.  Feel music and beat, riffs in all steps.

Off to walk, offer hellos and good-mornings to partners in other departments.  More than visibility, but connectivity.  Same as the internet, what I “sell”.  Today, assuring a historic and mammoth print in my narration.  Hope the same for anyone reading this note, anyone wanting to know how to be “more productive”.  Start with blind and unplanned movement, love of the movement, then walk toward a destination or block and know it’s only one of hundreds if not thousands if not MORE.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

On a quick lunch break, even though I just had lunch.  But that was a working lunch.  This too is a working, but writing atop, within, all about.  Day more productive than I thought, and still gathering new and more diverse approaches to AE life.  Making the language more tangible, and more connective.  The business of this, Sonic and Self, is very much akin to education.  Educating, but more so showing.  Just showing.  All businesses and writing, or anything, needs to show SOMETHING.

Need to load car.  Get these two boxes out of here.  If I’m to be the top producer in this department, at this company, then I need be lighter, quicker.  If I can, do everything on phone.  But the phone they issued me isn’t always working as best as it could.  May take it by IT….  I will.  Quick walk to other building then back here.  To keys.  Meeting in less than two hours… what do I want to have come to life in two hours.  Boxes away… same with business cards…. Get the fuck out of this office.

Found a coffee shop, downtown Novato.  “Dr. Insomniac’s”…. How appropriate.  And, in territory.  Lovely.  Okay… walking over to IT…  Or not.  Something I want to research and investigate.  Businesses in a specific part of SF…  Where the story can most visibly and immediately connect.  Found one target, then another.  Always moving, NEVER in office.  What I offer is not just the services of the company but myself… SELF.  Accessibility, more than authority…. My communication IS my credibility.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

New Port

New voyage, new journey in new day.  Going out on a site inspection at noon, leaving at 11.  Want to see more sites and more technical setups.  Staring day with specific aims…. Calls, some writing and blogging and budgeting in one of those thinking or blogging pods in the other building, then when back in office go for a run.  OR, not.  Have a lunch with a Senior AE at noon.  Set to talk prospecting and lead generation.  Want this to now REALLY ignite.  I’m not waiting till the end of the month when I’m an AE, officially.

This weekend working a wine event, both Saturday and Sunday.  Will meet as many people as I can.  Not passing out cards, or I will (the winery cards), and write number and other contact info on them.  Other aims for day, come back after meeting at 4, at Jacksons with a leads group member, and plan all of next week.  Specific destinations and businesses.  Going to start another blog, solely about building business and lead generation, expanding not so much customer base but visibility and narrative.  Woke late again this morning but disallowed and avowed and attitude and any nay-saying texture others might want to apply.  I’m moving this morning, to start calling at 9:30.  All East Bay.  Or, mostly.  Architects, medical tech companies, lawyers and CPAs.  Any startups I can find over there.

My calendar needs a makeover.  From here forward, something I learned from my Sales Engineer, all appointments before noon, 1pm latest.  Spend remainder of day connecting and researching.  A storm of consideration and contemplation this morning taking kids to school, my son sharing all his new knowledge with me about plants and stickers he earns from being helpful.  All they want to do is play, my babies.  I have to enact that more, and I’ve noted that before but I never bring myself to doing it, really implementing this methodology and sight.

The office feels like Friday, with all the laughs and tangential conversation, all the plans being voices and moves around the office for next week (saw someone moving her cube from one side of the building to the other).  There’s movement today, a flurry of it.  My madness abetted by my own bones, me here alone at this corner desk, afraid to get out of the office but exhilarated uniquely, concurrently.

Sent contract out yesterday, not the biggest or most impressive deal but a deal nonetheless.  Just called and made sure they received the Docusign agreement I sent.  She did.  Not rushing her, just making sure she received it okay.  And that’s one of the potentially volatile or sensitive parcels of the sales “process”.  The follow-up.  Honestly, I hate it, but I WILL do it.  Sales, sales…. What I do, I guess, but not wanting it to feel like sales.  How do you do that.. by talking.  Not doing your job so fucking much.  Talk about what you love about your company, or brand.  I would stay away from too much product talk.  Again, this is a new port, a new ship and sea you’re sailing.  If you do sales like this, that is….

My home office, to be minimalist.  I don’t want to be in house at all, if ever.  It’s just a dock, a station to port if I need, to do touch and go’s, to collect.  My Marin station will be… hmmmm… a Starbucks?  Or, Novato?  Yes, downtown Novato.  Or, San Rafael, since I met with the chamber bloke yesterday.  Today is not strategy-based.  It’s sowing, moving, getting.  Business and sales I’m finding take on more encouraging and self-fulfilling forms when you just move and think less.

My Agency, focused on the conversation.  Principle connection, connectedness.  More blog-based and media-driven actualities.  I’m not just feeling creative this morning, I’m hungry.  I want to work.  I will.  And in the way I wish, how I see fit.  Pulling up Berkeley on a map….

After calls, and setting one appointment with an Architect firm, a big one I think, I go to the other building, to sit and collect self in the Zen Den, a room named by myself and the GM when they just finished building and decorating it.  Rest of day, open… lunch, then more building leads and searching for businesses and business types.  The P-O-Z Agency that I’m assembling, not sure its precise mission.  Something connected to my belief in writing, and the code valuing Creativity and Conversation solving everything.  In this quiet room with the heater on, I speak with Self… I collect, see only volume and color and music in the day. Each movement with a beat, a certain feel and track to it.  Not sure how to explain it.  And maybe I don’t have to.  Maybe that’s what holds me up, and in place sometimes when spelling or presenting, be it Sonic of Self….  I think I need to explain, extensively.  Just speak, explain as you go.  Concentrate on your place, my agency values and speaks.  Haven’t written in this room in a while, I think since joining the Enterprise Office at Sonic.  Well here I am… and I will be out of office by EOD.

Downtown Novato, my office.  Just the laptop, backpack, a couple notebooks and a Starbucks.  Should download the app, and actually use it if I’m going to be there frequently.  In Santa Rosa now, and knowing I need to search for leads anywhere but here, like Gabe the other day advised (the Senior AE with whom I had lunch and canvassed around Alabama and York Street, SF.

10:48.  The day just zooming past me but the writer keeping an impressive pace.  What am I having for lunch?  What do I want?  Looking forward to hearing this Senior AE’s thoughts on prospecting and new business generation.  Leads are everywhere, I’m finding.  In rooms and conversations you would NEVER expect.  They are EVERYWHERE.  Don’t think so hard when prospecting.  Don’t prospect.  Say hi.  Have lunch.  Smile.  Enjoy your day and the people and the words you exchange.  Look to land and dock at a new port, each time.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Prospect Differently, and with more echoing exploration.

No more businesses of a certain size, I’m seeing.  For viability’s sake, and also creativity’s.

The AE life, today reiterating the value of certain practices.  Taking the Sonic laptop home with….  Sales is not sales, but evidence of useful connection.  Haven’t had much time to write.  Or, I have, just haven’t seized properly, or at all.  Now, finally, typing.  Only to have to leave in a bit.  Get a beer somewhere before event.  Don’t forget to bring cards.  Again, evidence of connection… or maybe not even that, just not giving as many fucks, keeping self moving, and writing and speaking.  Make it about YOU, you… the brand of you.

Sales is funny, and infuriating.  You get a sale, or sign someone, and the business isn’t of a certain desired size, and you think to yourself, “Did I just waste my time?” Write it out, write more, plan more, and change the plan day to day.  To be stoic and set is to be set to death.  Business death.  Out of business.  That won’t happen to me, but I know I need set sights not just higher but with more demanding stance.

Office quieting down, and I’m in a mode of sight, seeing things for me this semester and with my business forward.  Revolving around sales that is not sales.  I keep saying connection but maybe it’s more than that.  I’m doing this differently, celebrating what I’ve done so far and amplifying it in different angularity.

Thinking about my life selling, starting really with treadmills at Sears, when I was in high school and then a bit when in college.  I didn’t know that much about the machines, I just talked about them as much as I could then switched the stitch of the interaction to the person, and myself. What we had in common, or didn’t.  That’s as easy and eased as it should be, should remain.  Knowing my Now in this sales dimension as a more interconnected and self-abetted provision.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

12:37. First time working at coLAB.

Heading to a meeting, then will come back.  Tomorrow I’m heading to BMK, hoping to be there from about an hour.  Sales, Productivity, Work, Business… think business more than anything, BUSINESS… what I’m writing about.  And how sales shouldn’t be sales, but invitation to discussion.

Had a cup of espresso when I got here, and that’s all for caffeine for the day.  At this meeting, or any meeting, just chat.  Selling or chances of selling and converting are substantially harmed when you focus on conversion.  Or even hope for it.  Enjoy yourself… first.  Not just foremost, but ONLY.  Only focus on enjoying the conversation and new person you met.

Getting hungry. May have something to eat at this place I’m headed.  Not sure what they had.  Today was supposed to be a no-spend day, but maybe I can expense it.  Maybe.

Speaking tomorrow at Speakers club, and will be lecturing on this blog, sales, productivity, business.. What do you write about?  That will be answered and explained tomorrow.  In a word, business.  Sales.  Narration.  That’s three words.  Nearly impossible to condense and singularize to one.

Back coLAB after meeting, and feeling tired, a little hot and sick.  A part of me orders the writer to go home, to rest, then the other this one right here on this couch decrees that I stay put.  Right here atop this cushion.

Started composing proposal for new business I met earlier today, before coming here the first time.  Keep sniffling.  Keep moving, I say to myself.  Looking for more leads.  There was just a mammoth amount transferred to me. Have to get in early tomorrow… oh, and compose email to blast.  Send a couple out then head to BMK in morning.  The aim is to walk around, that’s it.  For two hours.  Just walk around, say hi, pass out cards.  Literally, that’s it.  At my lunch just a bit ago, I spoke with her, Cate, about how I do sell but I hate selling.  I don’t like the connotation and denotation of selling and sales, sales people.  Why not talk, say hi like I’ve always said on this blog and who knows where else, enjoy the moment and be in the moment.  Stop seeing yourself as a sell and more of a sayer, speaker.

Just had an idea.  It literally worded itself as ‘FUKsalez’.  Then I re-write it as ‘kNOwsalez’.  Writing about sales and speaking about sales, deconstructing and re-defining sales and what it means to be a sales person, or Rep, whatever.  How you DON’T sell.  You speak, narrate, educate.  And, too, learn.  You don’t have to be all-knowing, some profuse and pompous sales sage.  So many talk humility and don’t ever stop talking.  If you are in sales—and this is very much a note to this own writer—don’t stress yourself.  Don’t overthink, and don’t think, but rather enjoy.  Express.  Be more artful in your acts and actions and day to day actuations.

My talk tomorrow, an extended definition of sales, selling.  What’s above mentioned as well as other facets that’ll of course be in the moment. In the moment, in the moment… feeling my cold wrap itself around me, child and sniffles, some guys playing ping-pong just to my right and ahead about twenty or so feet.  I should go home and get in bed.  But I refuse.  Fuck that.  I can move, I can talk, I just had a meeting—reminds me I should write an email, thanking her for the time.  Her business, the only of its kind that I recall.  The uniqueness is what “sells”.  And it doesn’t sell—why do I keep fucking saying that?  It connects.  It educates.

This couch starts to become THE office within this collective office or workspace for me.  Feeling better, not wanting to leave but work more.  3:12pm.  I should go get wine for the happy hour here that’s happening… when again?  Next week some time, I think.  So much going on…  Need to plot days more precisely.  Doing just that with calendar, NOW.

mikemadiganLeave a comment